Kenneth Olden

Kenneth Olden is a scientist whose research revolves around diseases, such as cancers, and how chemicals and environmental factors affect them. He was director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and National Toxicology Program, being the first African-American to head an National Institutes of Health (NIH) institute, a position he held from 1991 to 2005. He has made multiple discoveries in the field, such as finding that the sweetener saccharin is not a chemical that causes cancer and funding research on the effects of bus exhaust on minority children in low-income housing residing in New York City.

Early life Kenneth Olden was born in Parrottsville, Tennessee, on July 22, 1938. Olden was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences for his discovery that blocking interaction between fibronectin and the integrin receptor can prevent organ-specific metastasis of malignant cells.